3402 - The History Of The Bare Sliver Of Daylight Between The Fascist Right & Conservatives w/ David Austin Walsh

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Happy Monday! Sam and Emma speak with David Austin Walsh, postdoctoral associate at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism and college fellow at the University of Virginia, to discuss his recent book Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the Harris campaign’s momentum, Trump’s email problem, the DNC, Ilhan Omar’s race, Trump's tough few weeks, Biden’s medicare drug price negotiations, consumer protection policy, Israel’s continuing genocide in Gaza, Ukraine’s counter-invasion, and dropping violent crime rates in 2024, before basking in Trump and Vance’s beautifully poor handling of the “weird” allegations. David Austin Walsh then joins, diving right into the major role of one William F. Buckley in shaping American conservatism in the second half of the 20th Century, presenting himself (and all of his bigotry) as the “rational Republican.” Stepping back, Walsh explores how Buckley, the founder of the National Review, came to be the resectable staunch anti-communist and anti-labor aficionado that just happened to have close ties to full-on Neo Nazis, looking at the roles of folks like Merwin Hart, Charles Lindbergh, and Russell Maguire in shaping the more explicitly racist antisemitic strands of Buckley’s war on communism, before Barry Goldwater’s major loss in 1964 (and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement) saw him begin to push away the electoral risk of rhetorical extremism. Expanding on this, David explores how Buckley’s goal of obscuring the bigotry behind the policies of his party became a fundamental element of the conservative political apparatus in the decades that followed, with lines being drawn between the intellectual race science of the Bell Curve and the explicit eugenics of William Shockley, and other major talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson becoming media darlings while pushing the line of “respectability” further and further. After briefly touching on the important role of the “crackpot” extremist bigots in Buckley’s political charade, Walsh steps back to analyze the role catholicism and theocracy have played in the background of this evolution, and wraps up with a brief assessment of the Right’s willing embrace of reactionary populism over recent decades.

And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma dive deep into reports of the major disarray within the Trump campaign in the wake of Harris replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket, before taking in Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan’s reflections on medical care in Gaza and the unmatched horrors facing Palestinians. The MR Team also has an expansive conversation on Harris’ approach to Gaza, how her public stance on the genocide influences Biden and Bibi (if at all), and what they’d like to see from her moving forward, plus, your IMs!

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